The time has come to refresh the admin team by having another general election!

ELECTION GENERAL INFORMATION

General Information Regarding Elections:

Every 6 months we have a community election for representatives on the admin team for 3 categories, they are Online Play, Modding and Forum Specific.

Each category will have TWO (2) Staff elected - that is,

TWO (2) representatives for Online,

TWO (2) representatives for Forum Specific, and

TWO (2) representatives for Modding.

For a total of SIX (6) elected admins (not including core staff).

The idea is that these representatives are well versed and respected in the community in the area they choose to nominate for. This way we have a balance of representation for all facets of the YSFlight experience as they relate to YSFHQ.

Online Play admins will focus on getting players onto servers and help organize events such as ATC flyins/meetups, airshows and combat events.Modding admins will focus on helping people who are new to modding by moderating the addon sections of HQ and providing educated and informed advice to new and developing modders for YSFlight.Forum Specific admins will focus on working within the forum, such as dealing with reports and helping solve situations which have occurred on the forum.

All admins will have full administrative privileges on the forums and the YSFHQ Discord Server.

The Election Process and key dates:

Nomination PhaseFrom 20Mar18 @ 00:00UTC to 02Apr18 @ 23:59UTC:
Members may submit a nomination for their chosen area of expertise only. Nominating members can choose only one category, choose wisely! There will be 3 topics nominating members can post a reply in. Nominating members should follow the application criteria (see further below).

Voting PhaseFrom 03Apr18 @ 00:00UTC to 10Apr18 @ 23:59UTC:
All members will be able to vote in THREE (3) polls for their TWO (2) preferred representatives for each category - that is, each member will get a total of SIX (6) votes in the whole election!

Polls Close and Results PhaseAfter polls close 10Apr18 @ 23:59UTC:
The TWO (2) nominated members with the highest votes in each category, after the integrity of the polls have been verified, will be declared the victors of that category's election. They will then be appointed within a reasonable timeframe (no longer than 1 week), and the former staff no longer a part of the admin team will be vacated from their positions, completing the staff transition and election process.

*We will try and stick as close to these times as possible, but of course there may be some time in between required to edit threads and change posting permissions etc. You have a week to get your nominations/votes in, that's plenty of time. Please don't complain that you couldn't vote at 23Mar17 00:01UTC for example...

ELECTION RULES

Nomination Rules:

Any member may nominate themselves as a candidate in one (1) of the three (3) areas (Online Play, Modding, Forum Specific) if they meet the criteria as follows:

Have not been banned in the last 6 months, and

Have not received a warning in the last 3 months.

Nominees are required to post a description as to why they are the best candidate for their chosen role in thread appropriate to their choice. See below for direct links when nominations open.

These threads will be locked to new replies at the conclusion of nominations. The posts in these threads will also be locked for integrity purposes, after the conclusion of nominations.

Should a nominee incur a warning or ban during the election campaign, their nomination will be voided!

Members cannot nominate other members, they can only nominate themselves.

Reminder: You can apply for only one role! If you apply for more than one role, only the most recent nomination will be accepted! All older nominations will be rejected and removed from the voting pool!

Campaigning Rules:

Campaigning is permitted only though publicly accessible channels and only by the candidate themselves.
A non exhaustive list of rule abiding examples includes campaigning on election topics and campaigning on social media.
A non exhaustive list of rule breaking examples includes campaigning on YSFlight servers and campaigning on Discord. Though these are public locations, the messages and communications posted are only temporary here, and cannot be viewed by the public after the event has transpired.

First infractions of the campaigning rules will result in a warning (relating to the campaign, not a forum board warning).
A second infraction of the campaigning rules will see the breaching member removed from the nomination pool.

Voting Rules:

All members (even nominees) can vote for TWO (2) representatives in each of the THREE (3) categories.

Members must vote within the allocated time frame (see above) by posting their choices in the poll in the relevant thread. No late submissions will be accepted.

In the event of a tie for first or second places, the tie shall be resolved by extending the duration of the poll.

The voting process shall be suspended for a category until such a time that the category has 3 or more nominees. This is to ensure no category goes uncontested.

Yes, nominees CAN vote for themselves!

Members can only cast their votes once in the election; that is, you may vote from only one YSFHQ profile, and not create other profiles to add more votes. You can place up to six votes, one per candidate, two per category. We take the integrity of elections here at YSFHQ very seriously, and YSFHQ will not tolerate any voting fraud! Members attempting to circumvent this rule will be banned for 6 months. Members who have commited vote fraud before and repeat this behaviour will be banned for 12 months. Nominees who participate in vote fraud will receive a 12 month ban. Nominees who commit vote fraud again after they were found to have previously done so will be banned permanently. You have been warned.

The outgoing admin team thanks you all for your continued support and wishes all nominees the best of luck in the upcoming election!

It's almost like the BOH still comprises the majority of the active voting members. Also regardless of outcome it would be a majority. Less than half of the slots could possibly have been filled by non-BOH members. Blame low running numbers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and surprise surprise, the 49th Goshawks win the majority vote again. i guess that "april fools" overlord joke wasn't a joke. was it?

Just pointing out that Dooms and myself aren't members of the 49th (We're 171st officers). If people don't agree with the results then people should stand and be elected on merit. We allow anyone who is a member (who hasn't been warned in 6 months) to stand and the admin team that has been reelected (based on these preliminary results) work our backsides off to try and better the community. We are among the most active members of the community and are fully committed to trying to improve the community. If you have any suggestions feel free to post them and we will do our best to address them. Although we may be members of the same sub-community at the end of the day we remember when everything (including this forum) was run for the individual squadrons aims and we can ensure you that we don't want to return to those days as we have learned from the mistakes learned from others.

When HQ first opened it was essentially purely run by the 171st due to everything that had happened on YSP2. We don't want to have issues with anyone, the admin team remains committed to the forum first and foremost and I can personally ensure you from my point of view that I would prioritise HQ over the 171st.

YSFHQ Elected Overlord
Overlord of VMFA-125 (CVW-171)
Previously Supreme Overlord of 323rd CAW
Friendly Neighbourhood Miscreant
Head Honcho at Talking Aero and British DefenceIf you see me post like this in a thread pay attention!

So, no turnover at all this election? It's almost as if those who are in power found "ways" to maintain that power. It's completely impossible that they won fair and square because the last six months have been six of the least-dramatic months ever to happen within the English YSF community. [/s]

Well compared to how much drama has happened in the past the majority of people took the way the admin team has been doing things as a positive (from what we can see and hear and we may actually be wrong somewhere).

The majority of the drama that happens occurs off-site on servers and sites such as non-HQ Discord servers, YSF Servers (Which we exercise no power over) and YouTube (and it is of course Google's problem not ours)

The only times the admins have made any decisions resulted from:

A) 1 member warned repeatedly about behaviour here on the forum and then banned for a while (Pat knows who this is)

B) A member banned from the Discord for a distasteful response to the decision to require some of parity with Forum and Discord usernames.

C) A member asked not to make a request due to being an unknown in the community (we like people requesting this openly to be of a certain standing) and then five minutes later did it again and therefore receive a warning as a wake-up call

D) Recently a member was accused of threatening to SWAT another member on a server and when we pointed out that we could ban the member permanently for the safety of the community they decided alongside non-members to threaten HQ and myself with legal action. This incident also concerned the sharing on PMs on a stream and a blatant disregard and insulting behaviour towards admins. Whilst this member took their anger mainly out on me I was the person who decided not to permaban for this behaviour as we don't just swing the ban hammer. This member was warned here and banned indefinitely from the Discord group.

As you can see there four are incidents within full HQ control in which we took swift and what we can only see as totally proportionate action in response.

As a group of admins, we are very conscious about what we feel best for the community and we also think that this election shows the majority of active members are voting for the incumbents. This therefore means that we seem to have a very vocal minority who are either not voting or are casting a vote for nominees that the majority don't feel should be elected (or who put out "Don't Vote for Me" parody campaigns ).

If there are members who feel we are going in the wrong direction we are more than happy to listen to calm and non-aggressive feedback (we will not tolerate being abused and insulted and feel no member should be). Any of the admins can be contacted both here on HQ or on the Official HQ Discord server in public or private as the situational requirements dictate.

Saying that we are all coming from the combat community is a bit of a misnomer and I feel that people have really short memories. I was a major part of the civilian community for a long time and am currently looking at getting another civilian server going (we do need one as I'm sure you'll agree with me on that Pat). I also attempted to run a civilian modding contest (the HQ themed repaint 757) and received no entries. Whilst I accept that we are not fully representative of all the members all of the time we try our best and discussions happen out of site quite often, For example, I'm working with Turbofan on getting a build ready for the new "Welshy's Airport Boozer" civilian server and if you would like to contribute to that build Pat (or others who may be interested) it would be greatly appreciated. Pat I would actually like to take the opportunity to ask if you would be happy to assist the administration of this new server?

In conclusion, I feel that we are doing a great job as an admin team and our yet to be officially confirmed reelection confirms that this is also the way most active members feel. We attempt to do as much as possible for HQ as an admin team and I can confirm that as a group we contribute more than actually gets noticed. I hope this post clears some stuff up but I affirm my belief that if there are issues people should bring them up in a calm and collected manner (I can sometimes not be the best at this myself) and I hope that we can continue to serve the community and run it in a manner that benefits the majority of our members.

Regards

Welshy (Facebook Name to Be Added)

PS I have included my name on here as it is not my legal name (a known as so to speak and with no actual relation to my real name ) have a vast number of you on my Facebook and am more than happy to receive feedback there or to [email protected]

tl;dr

I feel we're actually doing a great job, get things done and seek all opinions even if they don't agree with our points of view and that's democracy more than voting is. We want to hear all voices not just our own as long as they are calm, calculated, considered and most of all contain basic human decency that doesn't upset other members (or admins for that manner) due to being personal attacks and insults which has occured a little too much in the run up to the election.

2nd tl;dr

Be nice to every you magnificent wankers

YSFHQ Elected Overlord
Overlord of VMFA-125 (CVW-171)
Previously Supreme Overlord of 323rd CAW
Friendly Neighbourhood Miscreant
Head Honcho at Talking Aero and British DefenceIf you see me post like this in a thread pay attention!

Interesting discussion. I will chose not to contribute but to say that Eric has ran his SQL queries of the election polls and has made the following assertions to the admin team:

1) No one from the same IP has placed more than 2 votes per thread.
2) No user has submitted more than 2 votes per thread.
3) It is known to all administration that new users with less than 5 posts cannot vote.
4) There appears to be nothing signifying sock puppets have be used to stuff ballots.
5) There appears to be no ballot fraud committed this election

Understandibly, I am posting this, not Eric. Some users may doubt the truth of these statements.

Ideally eric would have made a public announcement but instead did so in the administration forum and it's not my place to reveal how he came to his conclusions (He's posted exact SQL queries and the like).

If anyone has concerns from here regarding integrity, please PM Eric.

Otherwise, I say the public have spoken, and the election is a true and fair view amalgamation of their poll votes.

I hope you all can agree and understand.

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

Interesting discussion. I will chose not to contribute but to say that Eric has ran his SQL queries of the election polls and has made the following assertions to the admin team:

1) No one from the same IP has placed more than 2 votes per thread.
2) No user has submitted more than 2 votes per thread.
3) It is known to all administration that new users with less than 5 posts cannot vote.
4) There appears to be nothing signifying sock puppets have be used to stuff ballots.
5) There appears to be no ballot fraud committed this election

Understandibly, I am posting this, not Eric. Some users may doubt the truth of these statements.

Ideally eric would have made a public announcement but instead did so in the administration forum and it's not my place to reveal how he came to his conclusions (He's posted exact SQL queries and the like).

If anyone has concerns from here regarding integrity, please PM Eric.

Otherwise, I say the public have spoken, and the election is a true and fair view amalgamation of their poll votes.